17 comments:

Anonymous
said...

From last February: Fox News' Sean Hannity asked Trump in front of a live Nevada audience if his attorney general would go after Clinton....You have no choice," Trump replied. "In fairness, you have to look into that.""She seems to be guilty," he said. "But you know what, I wouldn't even say that.""But certainly, it has to be looked at," Trump added. "If a Republican wins, if I'm winning, certainly you will look at that as being fair to anyone else. So unfair to the people that have been prosecuted over the years for doing much less than she did.""So she's being protected, but if I win, certainly it's something we're going to look at," he said.

That's just one comment, but I'm having trouble finding any promise to prosecute in these remarks.

“If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to have a special prosecutor to look into your situation,” Trump said. “There’s never been so many lies, so much deception. We’re going to have a special prosecutor.”

I am disappointed that Trump has decided to break such a publicly made promise before he has even taken the oath of office. While I voted for the guy, I'm not surprised he is already shedding campaign promises. I don't expect a lot from this guy. At least he isn't Hillary.

There's one good reason I can think of not to prosecute her: because the federal government needs to find out exactly what happened here. (Recall that, because she evaded recordkeeping requirements, then put those records on an eminently hackable server, and then scrubbed them before turning them over in response to a court order... there are things about the way the Secretary of State of the United States did business that foreign governments know, but that the US government itself doesn't know. That's very dangerous in itself, and it would be even if there were no question of legal charges.)

Investigation for the purpose of prosecution is different in a lot of ways than investigation for the purpose of finding information. Prosecutors won't follow up on a promising trail unless they think it will yield evidence they can use in court, that complies with the rules for criminal courts (no hearsay, etc.). Even a separate criminal and informational investigation could easily step on one another, since they're talking to the same group of people.You cannot compel testimony that would subject someone to criminal liability... but you can do so if you offer them immunity or if they have a pardon.

And on that last point, it has occurred to me that Obama may have either told Trump he is going to pardon Hillary and her crew, or have threatened to do so unless Trump offered assurances about prosecution. So there's that.

Not sure if there was a "win" situation for this. Trump could either disgrace himself by vindictively wielding federal prosecutorial power against a defeated political opponent, or disgrace himself by protecting the privilege of power in allowing a well-connected politician to remain blatantly above the law.

I've also read people talking about how Trump doesn't actually have to anything, since the IRS, FBI and Congress are all looking at the Clinton foundation, and the NYPD is going to probably prosecute Wiener. All in good time.

Yes, hopefully he's again not as obvious as people expect him to be. He's said "he" won't. He's said nothing about his AG or DoJ or Special Prosecutor, nor should he, frankly- undue influence and all that. We'll see.

No promise of prosecution there. Your twitter cite is just more of the same--investigate, which is not the same as prosecute.

It's also politically useful to walk away from his commitment to investigate. It would allow a Sessions-led DoJ and a notComey-led FBI conduct their own investigations free of Presidential influence (however hard to believe that non-influence might seem) and so begin to restore a measure of integrity to those two institutions. With the damage done by Lynch and Comey, that'll take a long time to achieve under any circumstance.

I doubt this has anything to do with class. More to do with pragmatism.

He's got a limited amount of time to achieve his top priorities. He can choose to spend that time fighting 1000 brush fires (many of them started by him) or he can focus and actually get something done.

That said, I would have preferred for him to say nothing. We don't know what investigations are pending (IRS and FBI may have open investigations into the Clinton Foundation, and you never know what may come out). In general, why comment when you don't have all the facts?

I was thinking of the Al Smith dinner, when Trump called the attendees out on how much they'd all loved him, for so many years -- when they wanted his money for their own political campaigns. Like Clinton herself, he's a regular part of that audience. She was there when McCain spoke in 2008, and I'll bet Trump was there too.

They all know each other. They all know all the same people. Trump doesn't have any class, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a class. Those two are much more alike than either would prefer to admit, which for me is underlined by the similarity in the Clinton Foundation scandals and the (potential, but highly likely) Trump Empire scandals.

Well, they're definitely in the same socio-economic class. I guess I just didn't think this had anything to do with class or social circles.

I am kind of laughing at all the breathless coverage of Trump before he's even inaugurated. Every politician ever elected has had to rethink at least some of their campaign promises, and it's kind of weird to me to be worrying about broken promises (this is aimed at the press, not you Grim) before he's even in office.

W ran as almost an isolationist, extremely wary of foreign entanglements and yet, when 9/11 occurred, he changed course. This is one area where, though I understand wanting to be able to rely on campaign promises or platforms, I have always been inclined to cut candidates of both parties some slack. Saying he would appoint a special prosecutor (before having all the facts) was IMO, somewhat ill advised. This despite my strong desire to see her prosecuted -- if that's warranted. I think it is, but like Trump I don't have all the facts either and I'm not an atty.

To me, it looks bad to comment (as Obama did when it suited him) on ongoing investigations. Saying he won't prosecute (even if that literally refers to 'appoint a special prosecutor') sounds perilously like signalling his administration won't prosecute if the FBI or IRS find grounds later. I think the average voter doesn't think about the nuances.

Ben Carson, the guy Trum ridiculed and ALinsky froze as "crazy", is now being pushed as some kind of parliamentary portfolio candidate for the US Presidential cabinet. Another hilarious semi reversal.

The joke is on the people who give power to totalitarian systems as well as the crazy megalomaniacs who think being on top is a good thing. Assuming Trum makes it to DC alive, then he can start gloating and poking the Alt Right on this.

Well, it is true that Bush ran on something like an isolationist platform. In fact, I was pretty isolationist myself before 9/11. Things change, sometimes.

That didn't really change. Bush's focus on getting the UN to do the work, was trying to offload the US load unto the world and have the world take care of the world. That benefits isolationism as Americans doesn't like funding the UN and other international law bs.

Now offloading all that stuff on Powell and thus the UN, was a major mistake due to sabotage operations. "Intervention" in the Democrat mold, is done by lone dogging it, as Clinton, Hussein, and HRC all did.

Did they spend long convincing the UN to convince Nato to bomb Libya.... What about Kosovo...

People who run on isolationist platforms tend to try to offload world issues on other people, although in this case Bush II had to take the lead due to AQ attacking on 9/11 (which also happens to be an old testament date for the birth of Jesus of Nazareth).

Trum won't want to deal with prosecuting Clintons for a couple of reasons. One, Clintons helped him crash the Republican primaries. Which led to Trum's ascension. Trum is said to repay favors and loyalties. Also Hussein still has the power of the pardon. I doubt it is coincidence that the Left has a catch 22 strategy. Even if HRC loses, she still has the President and the next President on her side. That is their DC class, which is a class of evil all on its own.